DVD Sales: Squeakquel Does More Than Squeak Out a Win

April 13th, 2010

The latest DVD sales chart reflects heavy discounts for pre-Easter sales, so it comes as no surprise that family films did so well. This includes Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which led all new releases, scoring first place with 1.98 million units sold and $33.75 million in sales.
Sherlock Holmes opened in second place with 943,000 units / $16.02 million in sales, which is a little low. Granted, it did do well on Blu-ray and it is already hugely profitable, so there's little reason for the studio to be upset at this point. Also, Easter sales might have drowned out more adult shoppers, which caused weaker than expected sales during its opening week. Speaking of Easter sales, The Princess and the Frog benefited greatly from the holiday, remaining in third place with 738,000 units sold for the week. It has sold 3.11 million units / $49.47 million in total. The Blind Side fell from first to fourth but still added 607,000 units / $9.70 million for the week for totals of 3.15 million units / $51.33 million after two. The Twilight Saga: New Moon landed in fifth place with 425,000 units sold, lifting its yearly best sales to 5.75 million units / $132.84 million so far.

The only other "new" release to chart was Alice in Wonderland. This re-release placed sixth with 358,000 units sold, generating $6.43 million in revenue.

With an influx of family films on the chart, it comes as no surprise that the Blu-ray sales crashed compared to last week, falling 25% to $34.0 million. However, that's still the third best week of the year so far and it was 97% better than the same weekend last year. Compared to the DVD sales, Blu-ray represented 12% of the total market and 14% of the top 20 comparison. As previously stated, Sherlock Holmes was the best selling Blu-ray of the week selling 500,000 units, which was three times the sales of the second best selling Blu-ray, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.